CHAP. V.

Division of the Art of Retaining into the doctrine concerning Helps of Memory, and the doctrine concerning Memory itself. Division of the doctrine concerning Memory itself into Prenotion and Emblem.

THE art of retaining or keeping knowledge I will divide into two parts; namely, the doctrine concerning Helps of Memory, and the doctrine concerning Memory itself. The great help to the memory is writing; and it must be taken as a rule that memory without this aid is unequal to matters of much length and accuracy; and that its unwritten evidence ought by no means to be allowed. This is particularly the case in inductive philosophy and the interpretation of nature; for a man might as well attempt to go through the calculations of an Ephemeris in his head without the aid of writing, as to master the interpretation of nature by the natural and naked force of thought and memory, without the help of tables duly arranged. But not to speak of the interpretation of nature, which is a new doctrine, there can hardly be anything more useful even for the old and popular sciences, than a sound help for the memory; that is a good and learned Digest of Common Places. I am aware indeed that the transferring of the things we read and learn into common-place books is thought by some to be detrimental to learning, as retarding the course of the reader and inviting the memory to take holiday. Nevertheless, as it is but a counterfeit thing in knowledge to be forward and pregnant, except a man be also deep and full, I hold diligence and labour in the entry of common places to be a matter of great use and support in studying; as that which supplies matter to invention, and contracts the sight of the judgment to a point. But yet it is, true that of the methods and frameworks of common places which I have hitherto seen, there is none of any worth; all of them carrying in their titles merely the face of a school and not of a world; and using vulgar and pedantical divisions, not such as pierce to the pith and heart of things.

For the Memory itself, the inquiry seems hitherto to have been pursued weakly and languidly enough. An art there is

indeed extant of it; but it is clear to me that there might be both better precepts for strengthening and enlarging the memory than that art contains, and a better practice of the art itself than that which is received. Not but (if any one chooses to abuse this art for purposes of ostentation) feats can be performed by it that are marvellous and prodigious; but nevertheless it is a barren thing (as now applied) for human uses. At the same time the fault I find with it is not that it destroys and overburdens the natural memory (which is the common objection), but that it is not well contrived for providing assistance to the memory in serious business and affairs. And for my own part (owing perhaps to the life of business I have led) I am ever disposed to make small account of things which make parade of art but are of no use. For the being able to repeat at once and in the same order a great number of names or words upon a single hearing, or to make a number of verses extempore on any subject, or to make a satirical simile of everything that happens, or to turn any serious matter into a jest, or to carry off anything with a contradiction or cavil, or the like, (whereof in the faculties of the mind there is great store, and such as by device and practice may be exalted to an extreme degree of wonder,)—all such things I esteem no more than I do the tricks and antics of clowns and rope-dancers. For they are almost the same things; the one an abuse of the powers of the body, the other of the mind; matters perhaps of strangeness, but of no worthiness.

The Art of Memory is built upon two intentions; Prenotion and Emblem. By Prenotion I mean a kind of cutting off of infinity of search. For when a man desires to recall anything into his memory, if he have no prenotion or perception of that he seeks, he seeks and strives and beats about hither and thither as if in infinite space. But if he have some certain prenotion, this infinity is at once cut off, and the memory ranges in a narrower compass; like the hunting of a deer within an enclosure. And therefore order also manifestly assists the memory; for we have a prenotion that what we are seeking must be something which agrees with order. So again verse is more easily learned by heart than prose; for if we stick at any word, we have a prenotion that it must be such a word as fits the verse. And this prenotion is the principal part of artificial memory. For in artificial memory we have the places

digested and prepared beforehand; the images we make extempore according to the occasion. But then we have a prenotion that the image must be one which has some conformity with the place; and this reminds the memory, and in some measure paves the way to the thing we seek. Emblem, on the other hand, reduces intellectual conceptions to sensible images; for an object of sense always strikes the memory more forcibly and is more easily impressed upon it than an object of the intellect; insomuch that even brutes have their memory excited by sensible impressions; never by intellectual ones. And therefore you will more easily remember the image of a hunter pursuing a hare, of an apothecary arranging his boxes, of a pedant making a speech, of a boy repeating verses from memory, of a player acting on the stage, than the mere notions of invention, disposition, elocution, memory, and action. Other things there are (as I said just now) which relate to the help of memory, but the art as it now is consists of the two above stated. But to follow out the particular defects of arts would be from my purpose. So much therefore for the Art of Retaining or Keeping Knowledge. And now we have arrived in due course at the fourth division of Logic, which treats of the Transmission and Delivery of our knowledge to others.

438

OF

THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING.

BOOK VI.

CHAPTER I.

Division of the art of Transmitting into the doctrine concerning the Organ of Discourse, the doctrine concerning the Method of Discourse, and the doctrine concerning the Illustration of Discourse. Division of the doctrine concerning the organ of discourse into the doctrine concerning the Notations of Things, concerning Speech, and concerning Writing; whereof the two first constitute Grammar, and are divisions of it. Division of the doctrine concerning the notations of things into Hieroglyphics and Real Characters. Second division of Grammar into Literary and Philosophic. Reference of Poesy in respect of metre to the doctrine concerning Speech. Reference of the doctrine concerning Ciphers to the doctrine concerning Writing. Ir is permitted to every man (excellent King) to make merry with himself and his own matters. Who knows then but this work of mine is copied from a certain old book found in the most famous library of St. Victor, of which Master Francis Rabelais made a catalogue? For there is a book there entitled "The Ant-hill of Arts." And certainly I have raised up here a little heap of dust, and stored under it a great many grains of sciences and arts; into which the ants may creep and rest for a while, and then prepare themselves for fresh labours. Now the wisest of kings refers sluggards to the ants; and for my part I hold all men for sluggards who care only to use what they have got, without preparing for new seedtimes and new harvests of knowledge.

Let us now proceed to the art of Transmitting, or of producing and expressing to others those things which have been

invented, judged, and laid up in the memory; which I will call by a general name the Art of Transmission. This art includes all the arts which relate to words and discourse. For although reason be as it were the soul of discourse, yet in the handling of them reason and discourse should be kept separate, no less than soul and body. The art of transmission I will divide into three parts; the doctrine concerning the Organ of Discourse, the doctrine concerning the Method of Discourse, and the doctrine concerning the Illustration or adornment of Discourse.

The doctrine concerning the Organ of Discourse, which is also called Grammar, has two parts; one relating to Speech, the other to Writing: for Aristotle says rightly that "words are the images of thoughts and letters are the images of words." Both these I assign to Grammar. But to go a little higher up, before I come to Grammar and the parts thereof just mentioned, I must speak concerning the Organ of Transmission in general. For it seems that the art of transmission has some other children besides Words and Letters. This then may be laid down as a rule; that whatever can be divided into differences sufficiently numerous to explain the variety of notions (provided those differences be perceptible to the sense) may be made a vehicle to convey the thoughts of one man to another. For we see that nations which understand not one another's language carry on their commerce well enough by means of gestures. And in the practice of some who had been deaf and dumb from their birth and were otherwise clever, I have seen wonderful dialogues carried on between them and their friends who had learned to understand their gestures. Moreover it is now well known that in China and the provinces of the furthest East there are in use at this day certain real characters, not nominal; characters, I mean, which represent neither letters nor words, but things and notions; insomuch that a number of nations whose languages are altogether different, but who agree in the use of such characters (which are more widely received among them), communicate with each other in writing; to such an extent indeed that any book written in characters of this kind can be read off by each nation in their own language.

The Notes of Things then which carry a signification without the help or intervention of words, are of two kinds: one ex